This morning I saw Rashid's sheep down in the stubble field grazing, so I hiked down the switchbacks to get some pictures. We looked at his vegetable plot again, and then Abdel Latif came along in his ancient VW bug and asked if I wanted to go to Aqraba. Since I wanted to get to the Internet Café there, and do some errands, I agreed.

It was an experience. No muffler. No rear view mirror. Back of passenger seat missing. But it runs, and as you grip the handle in front of the passenger seat, you can imagine you are in one of those thrill rides at an amusement park. As he careened around the hairpin turns while talking on his cell phone and smoking cigarette, I actually feared for my life. We got there and back.

After finishing my email at the Internet Shop (not really a café), I went to a falafel and donair restaurant, small, but neat and clean, and open air. For 1.5NIS I had a delicious falafel pita pocket crammed full of fresh veggies. That's about 50 cents Canadian or 35 cents American. Small scoops of a batter made from ground chickpeas, oil, and spices, are fried in hot olive oil until brown. Excellent and nutritious.

Then Abdel Latif took me to the Aqraba mayor's office where a young woman from Ramallah was waiting to fill out a book of statistics about Yanoun. She is the first woman in a position of responsibility that I have seen. She was in charge and Abdel Latif had to answer smartly. The whole episode lasted about a half hour and was all in Arabic. I caught an occasional yes, no, and olive trees. I felt like a dummy, so when I saw my young friend Mohamed Nimr later that evening I arranged for a daily Arabic lesson. He is coming at 12:00 tomorrow.

After coming back, Leila, Effie and I were invited to the Nimr house for a visit. I had bought a big watermelon in Aqraba for 8NIS, and took half of it with me; the other half I had given to Abdel Latif.

The Nimr house is in the top row of buildings. It is just below a rock escarpment seen in the photo. The top of the escarpment is about 20 metres from the back of the house. Villagers are not allowed to go beyond this invisible line. Last winter an Israeli activist, David Nir, climbed up the hill above the Nimr house and was assaulted and seriously injured. Being an Israeli he was able to press charges. The perpetrator, Avri Ran will be tried in September. There is a long article in Haaretz about the settlers here in this area. When I suggested I might want to climb up in back of their house, the family was ready to physically restrain me.

The village used to have a water tank up on the hill above the town with a pipe to the spring so that water could be pumped up. Then there were water lines from that tank to the houses in the village. Settlers destroyed the tank and ripped up the pipes and there has been no money to rebuild.

As we sat drinking tea in front of the Nimr house we saw an Israeli Army personnel carrier approach the village from Lower Yanoun. It stopped and talked to a shepherd in the wheat stubble, then came on up and turned east to the Abu Hani house. By this time the two Israeli young ladies, Effie and Leila, were hiking down to meet it. But after talking to the residents, the vehicle drove out to the east and out of view.

It turned out they were on a benign inspection tour-asking if there had been any settler trouble. I find this encouraging. Leila had heard a radio newscast in Hebrew that a settler had been shot near Sawiya, a village not far from here and not far from where grandson Lee had picked olives last October. I know nothing of the details. The death of a settler is liable to cause other settlers to rampage and kill or maim a few Palestinians.

Effie jinned up a delicious supper from the tomatoes and onions I brought back from Aqraba, plus eggs and cheese from the neighbors, all fried in olive oil from Yanoun trees. Together with this we had fresh homebaked, home milled, whole-wheat flat bread, I am sure I am eating very nutritiously. The flour used in this flat bread is not the same as the so-called whole-wheat flour you buy in the store. The flour here is from the wheat kernel -- nothing more, and most important, nothing less. The wheat germ and the bran are all there. Thus man can live on bread alone here. However the flatbread you get in a pita pocket in the towns is from white flour, imported, very likely.

The villagers don't raise wheat to sell, but to use at home.

After supper Adnan came by to go up to Abdel Latif's house for a discussion on how to use the money I brought from home. I had been advised not to give it out in dribbles to individual families, however great their need, and I agreed. Some internationals had done just that, and it caused some hard feelings. So we talked about priorities. When the UN installed the new generator six months ago to replace the one destroyed by settlers, the village got a grant for diesel fuel for that generator and the one in lower Yanoun, from the Palestinian Authority. I have seen the records, and the cost for running both generators for 3.5 hours a day is 3000NIS per month. The diesel fuel account now has only 1000NIS. The unanimous opinion of the three council members at the meeting was to use the money for diesel fuel. They feel that life would become intolerable without the generator running every day. I can see that. For example the houses have running water, but only because water is pumped up from the cistern under the house to tank or tanks on the roof using little electric pumps. There isn't much pressure, but at least when you turn the tap, water flows out. And of course the fact that there are streetlights for a while every day makes it safer from settler marauding.